Jesus teaches that living water is none other than the Holy Spirit, and Jesus offers that spiritual water without limit to those who follow Him.

“The gift and the presence of the Holy Spirit is the greatest and most wonderful thing which we can experience – we ourselves, the human community, all living things and the earth.  For with the Holy Spirit it is not just one random spirit that is present, among all the many good and evil spirits that there are.  It is God himself, the creative and life giving, redeeming and saving God.  Where the Holy Spirit is present, God is present in a special way, and we experience God through our lives, which become wholly living from within.  We experience whole, full, healed, and redeemed life, experience it with our senses.  We feel and taste, we touch and see our life in God and God in our life.”

Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life (Fortress Press, 1997): 10.

This is what happened to the woman at the well.  In her joy and satisfaction with life, she left her water jar telling everyone, “Come and see  a man who told me everything I ever did” (John 4:29).  She was no longer an outcast or someone carrying the pain of five marriages and a live-in boyfriend.  She had the living water that gave her new energy and life.

Have you tasted that water?  Has God so touched your soul that you feel refreshed and alive?

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
And your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
And your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:1-2).

This is what Jesus offers to you today.  Your life does not have to be an endless roller coaster.  You can find peace for today by listening to Jesus’ voice.  Let Him in your life today.

Yesterday during our worship assembly time we were singing great songs about the holiness of God. The throne scenes in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 are pictures of grandeur and purity. Jasper, carnelian, shinning colors, and a brilliant rainbow surround God. And who am I? Who are you? We are not pure; in fact, we are stained – covered with the mark of our sin. But God in his infinite grace can make us clean.

I really like the 3-pronged definition of sin that James McClendon gives in his book Doctrine (Abingdon Press, 1994).

• Sin is Refusal
• Sin is Rupture
• Sin as Reversion

Sin is everything that denies what God would seek to do in the world (refusal). It is what tears people apart when our social life is filled with anxiety, retaliation, fear and brokenness (rupture). Sin is where we seek less than the deep loving relationships that should exist between people. Sin settles for blame, guilt, shame, self-justification, blind ignorance, and cold accusation. Sin is everything that reverses the life giving power of God (reversion). Every practice that is half-hearted that allows death to choke out what is good – this too is sin.

Scripture is relentless in telling us about the nature of sin:

“Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).
“Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (James 4:17).
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Sin is truly all around us and we cannot escape it.

So yesterday as we were singing I couldn’t help but think of the  disaster in the Gulf and the waves of oil that so have marred the environment. This disaster looms large, and every day it brings more calamities, more hardship, and greater loss. This is how sin works in our lives.

And Christ is the only answer for the problem of sin. There is nothing we can do to lift or clean ourselves. Only he can make us whole and that is what He does to those who are His.

Are you His today?

I find that historic prayers can be helpful in remembering what is important.  Here is one from the Celtic tradition that I found in Tracy Balzer’s Thin Places: An Evangelical Journey in Celtic Christianity (Leafwood, 2006): 39.  I find that the Celts have a way of seeing the world with fullness– a way of living that I deeply desire in my own life.

God be with thee in every pass,

Jesus be with thee on every hill,

Spirit be with thee on every stream,

Headland and ridge and lawn;

Each sea and land, each moor and meadow,

Eachi lying down, each rising up,

In the trough of the waves, on the crest of the billows,

Each step of the journey thou goest.

I am looking for some help.  The Bible teaches and we believe that our Redeemer lives.  What picture would you use to illustrate the redemption of God?  It can be anything really.  Do you have a favorite photograph that the caption “My redeemer lives” might fit?

So how do you understand redemption?  What image comes to mind that captures this great truth?

Would you share it with me?  Either leave a comment (with a link) here in cyberspace or send me an e-mail.